House of Secrets (37 page)

What at first seemed to be a sexual abuse case against Eddie and May began spinning off in several directions, metastasizing like some kind of family cancer. Pixie Good told Ready in Tampa that her father had told her he’d buried an infant before for one of her aunts in Ohio.

The baby had died after birth, she said. Ready noted it as another lead to chase down. On February 21 in Florida, Ready got a call from social services in Pasco County, in connection with the blood being drawn from the children. Doctors’ examinations had revealed that Dawn and Shasta had both been penetrated anally, Dawn vaginally as well.

The children had little control over their bowels, indicating chronic sodomy. Dawn had disclosed that Skipper, Willie, and “Grandpa Eddie”

were the perpetrators. Ready and Willette interviewed Skipper. He adamantly denied abusing the children. But he and Skipper had beat up Joel after Pixie accused her husband, he said. Then Willie told his own story. His father had been sodomizing him since he was 9, he said.

He’d sodomized him three times in three different states while they were on the run, he said. Ready confronted Charles Sexton in an interview after social workers told him Kimberly was disclosing that Skipper had fondled her. He denied assaulting Dawn and Shasta. But he admitted touching Kimberly’s vagina when the family was staying at a motel in Indiana. The last day in February, Ready reached May Sexton’s sister in Ohio to talk about Pixie’s story. She denied ever having a baby die, let alone ever having her brother-in-law dispose of it.

Ready asked her about Eddie Sexton’s general background. She seemed terrified of reprisals. Then she told him another sister had been raped by Eddie Lee Sexton and another Sexton relative. The sister bore Eddie’s child, who was now 14. After the Sextons’ arrest, the sister had fled Ohio and was in hiding, fearful police would question her and bring Sexton’s wrath. The story matched the charges discussed by Sexton personal attorney James Gregg. By March, Ready was hunting for “Uncle Toehead,” trying to confirm Shelly Croto’s story that he’d been killed and put in the trunk. He found him in Toledo. His name was Eddie Cline, and he was very much alive. Cline said he was coming to Canton anyway. Sure, they could talk about Eddie Sexton. Two days later, Ready got a call from Cline’s attorney. He wouldn’t be making any statements, he said. There were more stories of fraud and fires and Eddie Lee Sexton soliciting the services of the “Ice Man.” Otis was claiming Dave Sexton had hired the con to kill his wife years ago, but backed out of the plan. So the Ice Man’s crew robbed the brother, leaving him tied up in his living room. Ready got a name, and later a three-page sheet of convictions, burglary, bad paper, and assault with a deadly weapon among them. His name was Paul Shortridge. He was in a West Virginia penitentiary doing time for counterfeiting. During one interview, Sherri Sexton disclosed one alleged rape after another, not only by her father, but relatives. She’d been fondled at 9, then later raped by her late uncle Joe Sexton and a cousin, she said. She told her parents, she said. “But they just yelled at me,” she said. Sherri said she’d been raped in Florida. One night, after her aunt Jean Sexton left for the evening, her uncle Dave asked her to clean his trailer. She had her son Christopher with her. She said her father’s older brother asked for sex. She refused. He pushed her on the floor, pulled off her shorts and panties and raped her, she charged. Sherri began shaking and crying, showing the first emotion Steve Ready had seen from the young woman with the vacant eyes. She continued, saying a week later, she was raped by a cousin. She moved out of the compound, she said, first staying with another couple, then moving into a battered woman’s shelter until her father came to Florida. In March, another tip came Ready’s way. Dave Sexton allegedly had fathered an incestuous child with a daughter when the family was living in Ohio years ago. The daughter now was married and lived in Canton. Ready interviewed her at her home, going slowly, using his best hands-on approach. Yes, she said, her father had raped her when she was a teenager. She’d lived with the secret for 13 years. She’d not been sexually active before that. She had a boy. That boy was Tommy, the teenager living with Dave and Jean Sexton in Moon Lake. They’d adopted him after birth. She’d always told her mother the boy had been fathered by a neighborhood teenager. But she said she’d revealed the true story to her mother after her uncle Eddie Lee Sexton was arrested.

Ready asked her what she’d like to see done. “I’d like him punished for what he did,” she said. Ready filed a detailed police report.

Later, he talked to her again. She had talked to her mother, she said.

“I’ve decided I don’t want nothing done,” she said. Back at the Renkert Building, Ready was swimming in paperwork. There were more sex charges to be written up on Eddie Lee Sexton, as well as letters to jurisdictions in other states where assaults had allegedly occurred.

The leads were coming faster than he could keep up with them. Plus, May Sexton had been scheduled for trial on Lana’s sexual abuse charge.

Her trial was set for April. Ready was helping local prosecutors reach witnesses for that trial. Ready thought, where did this case end? Or, more curiously, where did it all begin? Where in the Sexton family tree was permission first given to violate one’s own flesh and blood?

One day, Ready was talking to Anne Green. “Sexton,” Anne Green said.

“Think about it. Sex. Ton. Ton of sex.” A sexton also was someone who maintained a church and its religious articles. “A sexton also maintains the church graveyard,” Otis said. As more stories of rituals emerged from siblings, Eddie Lee Sexton certainly maintained his own place of worship. But nobody could figure out what gospel he was preaching. A little general occult.

little fundamentalism. A little Satanism. A little sci-fi hustle called the Futuretrons. The children still were paying for his little church. Ready made the 30-mile round trip to Shelly Croto’s trailer in Bolivar dozens of times. He’d make appointments, but when he arrived no one would answer the door even when her car was there. He suspected she was hiding inside. Sherri Sexton succumbed to past traumas. She was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, suffering from depression and PTSD. Social workers were reporting more Satanic manifestations with Lana. Pixie Good, meanwhile, appeared to have suffered a complete mental breakdown at the Hillsborough County Jail. Psychiatrists put her on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs. She suffered from ulcers. By April, she was on an IV because she was not eating or drinking. In May, she tried to cut herself and was put in restraints.

She was having auditory hallucinations, hearing her father’s voice.

She was sleeping only four hours a night, experiencing nightmares and flashbacks. There would be another suicide attempt as her father’s trial approached. Ready began typing reports at home. A lot of leads never were committed to paper. There just wasn’t time. His family life was suffering, not to mention the rest of his caseload. Ready, Judee Genetin, and other DHS officials met with the Stark County prosecutor’s office to consider filing sex assault charges against Skipper Sexton. The office wanted to wait and see how Lana Sexton held up on the stand at her mother’s trial. Luckily for Ready, much of the mother’s case was being coordinated by county attorneys. A DHS

supervisor called over to one of Ready’s superiors at the sheriff’s department, telling him Ready was bogged down with the Sextons. DHS

needed more manpower, not only for Sexton, but the other cases Ready was supposed to be working. “If Deputy Ready can’t do it,” the command officer said. “We’ll find somebody else who can.”

“Do what you got to do on the Sextons,” she told Ready. “And forget everything else.” After weeks of motions and an unsuccessful attempt to move the trial out of Canton, a jury was impaneled on April 12 to weigh sex charges against May Sexton. Her courtappointed attorney Jean Madden wanted May’s husband and two children in Florida to testify on her behalf. The state wouldn’t fly them up for the trial, and a plan to have them testify live by satellite TV was scrapped because of costs. The trial would last only two days. Social workers Bonita Hilson and Tracy Harlin set the stage with the family’s DHS battle.

Psychologist Robin Tener’s evaluation of Lana was introduced. Tabatha Fisher told the jury of the disclosures and seizures in her foster home. Psychological reports from her hospitalization at Akron Children’s were introduced. James Sexton, now 18, testified. James was working as a cashier now at a gas station and living in a foster home. He’d been the most vocal of the Sextons all along. He appeared to relish the chance to strike back with words. He told the jury about the Futuretrons, the mark on Lana’s hand, and an expected “$2.5

million” advertising campaign. He testified he saw Lana whipped for failing to smile at the dinner table.

He detailed various Sexton household punishments and the occult atmosphere. Jean Madden cross-examined him. She introduced to the jury that he’d been under a psychologist’s care. “Do you feel you were picked on?” she asked. “Picked on?” James asked back. “Yes.” James shot back, “Sexually molested. Abused. Beaten.” She tried to discredit the occult stories. “Now, you saw devils floating around the house?” she asked. “Yes … I actually seen them.”

“Um-hmm,” the attorney said. “And my dad was the leader of it.”

“Your father threatened you if you told anybody about that?”

“Yes. One time he had a baby sitting in the middle of the table, all cut up and baked.”

“Where did he get the baby?”

“My mom had her.”

“When?”

“I’ll say in 87.” It was one of several “babies” his mother had given birth to in the house, he claimed, babies who later disappeared. After a 10-minute mid-afternoon break, Lana Sexton took the stand. Assistant prosecutor Kristine Rohrer spent a half hour on the basics, warming her up with the size of her family, siblings’ names and ages and nicknames, descriptions of the house on Caroline Street. They covered the Futuretrons and the whippings. Dressed in blue, May Sexton cried at the defense table, dabbing her eyes with Kleenex. Lana would say later in the trial she didn’t want to see her mother punished. She wanted her to get counseling. Then Rohrer headed for the heart of the felony charge, an incident when Lana was 8. The attorney asked, “Did anything besides being whipped with a belt happen that made you uncomfortable with your mom?”

“Yes,” Lana said. In her parents’ bedroom. Lana continued, “Sometimes us kids would take a shower in the bathroom by her bedroom. And I was drying off from my shower and she called me in there.”

“What did she say?”

“She told me to sit on the bed.”

“And then what happened?”

“She would feel me in the wrong parts.” Rohrer wanted a more specific area. “Private parts,” Lana said. “Which private parts are you talking about?”

“Your front private parts.”

“Front private parts on the top, front private parts on the bottom?”

“On the bottom .. she started to rub me.” Lana said she went to bed afterwards, crying. The fondling lasted only a couple of seconds, she said. But it was long enough for the jury. May Sexton called no witnesses. Her attorney argued the prosecution failed to prove its case. The panel came back with a guilty verdict in two hours. May dropped her head onto her arms, then cradled her face in her hands. As deputies put the mother in irons, Skipper Sexton, sitting in the courtroom audience, said, “This is bullshit. I know she’s innocent.”

They were after the wrong parent, he said. Judee Genetin told reporters May’s case might not be a “oneshot deal,” hinting further charges could arise. The following week, May Sexton appeared in court for sentencing. Jean Madden argued she had no criminal record. She asked the judge not to be influenced by the stream of stories about the Sexton family still appearing in local newspapers. Common Pleas Judge John W. Wise looked at Estella May Sexton and asked her if she had anything to say. “Yes, Your Honor,” she said. “I would like to maintain my innocence and I’d just like to get it straightened out, and then I’ll accept anything the court wants to give me.” Judge Wise told her she’d violated a parent’s prime responsibility. “You have to protect them, take care of them,” he said. He sentenced her to two years in prison, the maximum under the law. Authorities had two good weeks. In Florida, Pixie Good pled guilty to manslaughter charges, agreeing to testify against her father and brother. The day May’s trial started, a fax hummed off a machine in the Renkert Building for Judee Genetin and Steve Ready. The documents were from Gene Screen, a Dallas genetic testing lab. The blood testing was completed.

According to genetic markers, Eddie Lee Sexton was the probable father of Dawn and Shasta Sexton. The lab fixed the percentage of paternal probability at 99.99 percent. “We want to get Momma,”

detective Mike Willette said. Willette and Linda Burton wanted to connect May to the homicide. Through the spring and summer, they talked to all the Sexton offspring. “Nobody would give her up,”> he later said. Willette, Burton, and John King did find plenty of support for Jay Pruner’s theory of Manson-like control. Sexton siblings disclosed their home life, the assault drills, the robberies on the road, the burning of the trailer on Treaty Road. Detectives talked to Herb Shreiner, Jackson Township’s fire investigator. He detailed the two suspicious fires on Caroline Street. They also saw the FBI report on Clyde Scott, May’s father, about Sexton’s fire schemes. Later, Steve Ready showed up with a file from the Canton Fire Department.

There were eight fires in the city of Canton among the extended Sexton family, two undetermined, six arson. Three of them were in homes owned by Eddie Lee Sexton on Third Street and Fifth Street. One file reported that someone in the family had earned the name “The Mechanic,”